Opening Day

Greetings All,

I guess this is my entry into blogosphere! I was able to come home for an hour today and opened up my three hives. Two did not make it and one did. If I had pre planned I would have invited anyone to come by to join. Sometimes it seems I forget everything from season to season! So the middle hive which was struggling with laying workers and did not make a queen in spite of Denny's efforts to introduce other brood with the hope of them raising a queen was dead. It was rather messy with some odd patterns of dead bees and black rings of dead ones. I took some pictures and will try to attach them. Some of the honey was loose and drippy and over all it was a mess. My question is should I scrap all the yucky foundation off and put them in once cleaned or just remove the dead bees and the parts that are moldy? Also some of the foundation is glistening with either water or perhaps honey. Again, remove it all or let the new batch take care of it. On the bottom board were several 1/2 inch white worms or larva. Yuck. I scraped them out and left the bottom board to get some sun to kill what ever might be there.
The other hive was dead but none of the odd stuff found in the middle hive. The one hive that made it had robbed the honey but I figured that was OK. This hive will not need much cleaning before I put a package in.
The hive that made it look OK with decent activity. I did not see any brood except for a couple of larvae in between the two supers and a few drone cells. I did see one queen cell but did not have time to look for her. I hope she is there! I do hope this one begins to take off. I removed the one honey super that I left on and some of the bees were either making it or storing what they had robbed, The comb looked new.
The delivery of my two packages from Better Bee has been delayed again with the delivery for next Friday. I got a note card indicating such as well as a phone message. It was said that the weather is poor and very windy for shaking.

So I will try to post the pictures and let me know what you think. If anyone is interested in coming by when I open them again let me know and I will post when I will do this. I am hoping to take off the first full week in May to get my garden in order.

Many thanks in advance for reading and your feed back. Again, I would be most pleased to host a bee gathering at my place any time.

Best,

Christopher

P.S. I can't figure out how to get to the pictures I took today. I need remedial help!

Quick Update on the New Bees

Everything seems to be settling down to work as usual. A lot of pollen carriers coming home loaded out.

I took Denny's advice and added the second brood box of mostly new foundation frames to give them something to work with. That has solved the wild comb building in the empty feeding chamber. I peeked in today to check if they needed any more syrup. Seems they are not taking as much as last week. They are only taking about half of a pint every couple of days.

When is it OK to pull the feeder and let them fend for themselves? Is that the time to put on a honey super with the excluder? It seems that there must be a tipping point from needing food to storing food. That point eludes me.

We could not ask for better weather to get the new hive started. I feel good about the prospects. Our apples are just starting to show some pink up here. No dandelions yet though.

Bud

Denny's bees...

This spring weather is really warming up and of course the bees are building up fast now. I just finished going through all my hives, taking note which queens are doing best, and there are some that need new queens. I'm going to order some Carniolan queens from Koehnen & Sons, Calif.

http://www.koehnen.com/queens.html

I've had good luck with their queens in the past, and another beekeeper in the village has a very strong hive headed by a Koehnen Carniolan introduced into her hive last year. Here's a photo of it at the beginning of April.... right in the middle under the bees is a pollen patty I had given her... the bees all over it. I feed within an empty chamber.

Last year I had a bottom mounted Sundance Pollen trap on a hive and gathered 5 or 6 quarts of pollen, which I froze and used in my pollen patty mix this spring, and gave all the hives a series of pollen patties beginning around the first week of March. It really helps kick start the brood rearing, especially for those clusters that don't happen to be parked near any frames with pollen. It's also good to give them sugar syrup, 1:1 ration of sugar to water.

The pollen patty recipe I use is ... equal parts of feed grade Brewer's Yeast and Mann Lake "Bee Pro", ...then add to that between 15-20% bee pollen by weight, 1 tablespoon olive oil, add some honey from my bees, and enough 1:1 sugar syrup mixed in until the consistency is like peanut butter.  I paddle out fistful portions and squish between wax paper, ... here's a patty ...notice the bee pollen pellets within.

This supplemental spring feeding will help your bees build up for the early flows such as Black Locust which have that light colored wonderful, elegant honey which doesn't crystallize quickly.

Right now the Red Maples and Willow should be giving the bees some good pollen.

I hope your bees are all doing well in the warm spring weather.

Also, here's a great beekeeping forum that I've found to be a great resource... http://www.beesource.com/forums/index.php

More later..

Denny

Organic Approaches to Apiculture offer promising results

Todd Hardie of Honey Gardens Apiaries in Ferrisburgh, VT, is a lifelong beekeeper and part of the challenging, yet exciting and hopeful, effort to develop holistic beekeeping practices. He is featured in Jan Cannon's new film, "Health & the Hive: A Beekeeper's Journey." http://www.jancannonfilms.com/honeybee.htm

Ross Conrad of Dancing Bee Gardens in Middlebury is the author of the newly released book, "Natural Beekeeping." http://dancingbeegardens.com/Books.php

Call Dover Free Library (348-7488) to see if their copy of the book is currently available.

Ross also appears in the film "Health & the Hive."